Existing broadband penetration rates and availability of competitive backhaul was not taken into account when the sites were selected, according Quigley.

"We haven't assumed there will be contestable backhaul into these sites," he said. "Assuming that would have biased [the process]."

Quigley said NBN Co had released a request for proposals to create detailed network designs for each of the five sites. He believed the process would take "several months".

Construction was expected to start "early in the second half of the year."

"We'll be really getting on with the job on the mainland of fibre-ing up these communities," Quigley said.

"There's a lot we will learn as we go through the process of rolling out the network."

Quigley said each of the five communities had been informed of the network rollout this morning. He hoped "a large number" in each would opt for the fibre services.

Pricing

Quigley and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy fielded a bombardment of questions at the launch in Sydney today over pricing for the fibre services.

It was suggested by several journalists that retail internet service providers (ISPs) could be given free wholesale access to the NBN Co network in the test phase; however, this was "not part of the plan", according to Quigley.

"We will be pricing at market rates to get uptake on the network," Quigley said.

Quigley said that any future announcements on Tasmania's wholesale access rates should not be taken as revealing the eventual national access price.

He declined to reveal what Tasmanian wholesale access would cost.

Conroy said the Government would not "subsidise" access to wholesale or retail services. The Government in particular had been dogged by criticism in recent months that high-end fibre services were too expensive compared to ADSL.

"We've never said we'd subsidise 100 Mbps to anybody," Conroy said.

But retail pricing would be consistent in all five communities - meaning rural users would pay the same national rate for a service as their metropolitan cousins.

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